Comment by anigbrowl
11 years ago
Thanks for the clarification. I should have addressed this in more nuanced fashion, given the reality of 50+ state educational systems and innumerable school districts witht heir own rules, rather than a single national standard. Instead, I critiqued the weakest instances of the current system as if they were the norm.
Also note that California needs to mandate degrees in related fields at least partly because the California school systems are in so much trouble. Pick a random school district in a suburb in the US Northeast, and despite the lack of requirement, it will tend to be the norm (many inner-city districts burn out teachers so fast that I doubt any set of requirements would suceed in getting quality teachers).
The general consensus is that California school systems are poor, and what little I've seen of them seems to hold true: I grew up in the Northeast, and communities that are comparably affluent in Southern California to there are much worse off school wise. The most common point to blame seems to be Prop 13[1], but I also notice that California has many more decisions centralized, and does also tend to have more parents who are non-native English speakers, so I don't know what is to blame.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%2819...